AI-generated fake Biden robocall urges New Hampshire voters to skip primary
Thousands of New Hampshire Democrats received a cloned Biden voice telling them a primary vote would forfeit their choice in November; the operative behind it was fined and criminally charged.
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Two days before New Hampshire’s presidential primary, thousands of the state’s Democratic voters received a robocall carrying an AI-cloned recording of Joe Biden’s voice, telling them that voting in the primary would mean they could not vote again in November and urging them to “save your vote” for the general election. The claim was false: New Hampshire primary voting has no bearing on general-election eligibility.
The call was traced to Steve Kramer, a political consultant then working for a rival Democratic candidate, who later admitted commissioning it. The Federal Communications Commission said the calls were sent using spoofed caller ID, made to look as if they came from a former state party chair, and distributed via caller-ID-spoofing services and the telecom carrier Lingo Telecom. The FCC proposed a $6 million fine against Kramer and separately fined Lingo Telecom for transmitting the calls without required caller-ID verification; Kramer was also indicted on state charges including voter suppression and impersonating a candidate.
The episode arrived as the clearest demonstration yet, in a US election context, that voice-cloning tools had made a synthetic robocall of a major-party candidate cheap and technically trivial to produce and distribute at scale — no video, no visual scrutiny to defeat, just a recognisable voice on a phone line. It prompted the FCC to formally rule, weeks later, that AI-generated voices in robocalls fall under existing anti-robocall law, and it became a recurring reference point in 2024 debates over state and federal deepfake-in-elections legislation.